Always Winter and Never Christmas
by Grimm Sister
Summary: This is part summary and part musings on the movie version of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, much like A Quiet Word, which did the same with Prince Caspian.  Each chapter covers roughly half an hour of film.  New chapters will appear on holidays.
1. Preface

Preface

A couple of times over the past year I've sat down to do the prep work for this, and I've felt it was ruining something. While A Quiet Word was everything exploding in my head during _Prince__Caspian_, writing the blow by blow of _The __Lion, __the __Witch, __and __the __Wardrobe_ felt like it spoiled something simple and pure.

My current theory is: because I love Peter I don't mind that what I'm watching is unapologetically _his_ story while the book was undoubtedly Lucy and Edmund's. And one of my greatest skills in life is loving what's there and letting go of what isn't, but when you factor in that I love Edmund most and Lucy is the only female in the Narnia universe that C.S. Lewis never makes stupid, immoral or happily powerless – and the process of writing about the movie suddenly gets all of my hackles up.

Perhaps it's because I see this story as one about how you encounter the Other, the Spiritual Realm, and that doesn't really mean going into the wardrobe any more than stumbling into a cathedral is the first step in religion. It's not meeting Aslan, either, that's the advanced course. The Encounter with the Spiritual Realm, the Other, starts with the first person that you meet – Mr. Tumnus, whom Lucy like a good Christian girl converts by her sheer passive sweetness; the Queen of Narnia, in the tiniest of nods toward the fact that the religion you practice has far more to do with how you were raised than which "side" you have discerned and chosen; and then the Beavers, who are the Guide figure in the Pevensie children's collective Quest. The first two are just The Other, and both Mr. Tumnus and the Queen of Narnia lead you to the Underworld part of the Hero's Journey. And, all told, the full Hero's Journey only works if you consider the Pevensies collectively (which is a neat trick - because at the very least in this story they are only one character subdivided so that Lewis can have them talk to each other), but while the book definitely privileged Lucy and Susan following Aslan and Edmund in the Castle of the White Witch – the Descent into the Underworld and the exploration of the darker places of the Spiritual Realm, finding hope there against all odds – the movie prefers the Battle and Peter's coming of age. After all, only the latter has battle scenes.

The book is a negotiation of Bounds of the Spiritual Realm and the Exploration of the Underworld and the movie is a Coming of Age. And that's fine – if that story didn't work quite well we'd lose over half the canon of Western Literature. But, well, I love Edmund most and the exploration of the Dark is much more fascinating than whether or not Peter will man up (although the nod to the fact that any ordinary boy won't automatically be a good hero – much less _king_ – over a magical land just by virtue of stumbling into it is nice, don't get me wrong).

From a production standpoint, it makes worlds of sense. They can bank on a slightly older actor to anchor the film – and these decisions were almost certainly made before they knew how fantastic Georgie Henley and Skandar Keynes would be. So I get it, but because it's more straightforward, there's less to say. And that's where we are and why this is slow in appearing.


	2. Bonfire Night

**A/N:** This is a series of thoughtful musings on the movie version of _The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe_. Roughly each half hour of the film will have one section of this story. The idea, like the previous version on _Prince Caspian_ was inspired in large part by the word of Television Without Pity (at least, with the work of Jacob on that site).

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><p><strong>Bonfire Night<strong>

This is a story we already know. This is a series of stories we have all lived, that we already know by heart. The first is Bonfire Night.

London is burning. Explosions and fire rained from the sky. This time it was not something imagined, something that almost happened. This time it was not a celebration of what had not come, playing with fire because we had escaped the burning. This was the real end of London and England. Finally, the work of Guy Fawkes would be completed, by outside force rather than by treachery. But it felt like treachery, because where you thought you were safe you are no longer. The Air Force is a kind of treachery, because the devils have taken to the sky with the angels. It is an idea that will occur, in a year and thirteen hundred years, to the High King of Narnia. When he brought the completion of Bonfire Night to a new world - a world that froze but never before burned.

But any Apocalypse is merely a series of small tragedies. The terror of the Blitz is in the thousands of scenes like this one, a single bomb that drops down to the streets below, where a family huddles in an air raid shelter. Where one boy refuses to come away from the window, not quite able to believe it isn't a fantastic display of joy, that hate could be what is behind it. Bright lights in the sky, exploding in an array of colors, were always before a celebration. A celebration of this not happening.

The tragedy of a mother who sees the boy, who screams for his older brother, terrified and without a partner, unable to protect her children, forced to make the elder ones grow up so that the younger can survive at all. The tragedy of a boy who feels his father getting further and further away, who cannot get to a safe place without at least the image of his father to comfort him. Who cannot imagine surviving the blasts, having his family safe, without running back into the house for his father's photograph.

The tragedy of a little girl who screamed for her mother and got only her older sister, who was trying so hard to grow up fast enough to be the mother that her sister needed while wanting her own mother, who was busy. Trying to get her family to a place where they would be safe and calm, wandering if then she could go back to being a child.

The tragedy of a mother who screamed after her sons not to go back into the house, to stay in the shelter. The tragedy of the look in her eyes, when her elder son ran into the house after the younger, and she knew that she could not protect her family anymore. Because her elder children were growing up and thinking they had to put themselves in danger for their younger siblings. She would have to lose them to save them now. Would have to let them grow up, so that they could stay alive. Let them leave, so that she could find them again someday, after the burning of London. How she couldn't stop screaming, "Come back!" to no avail.

The tragedy of the broken glass on a photograph, a cruel symbol of their inability to keep their family together here, in the Apocalypse. A symbol burned in effigy, not by choice any more.

The next day they compare their escape to a holiday in the country. The breaking of a family to a family outing. A hundred small tragedies on a single platform, as a hundred families break, as hundreds of tiny hearts shatter, sever from their parents and protectors, and are forced to grow up. The end of the world looks like a train, and a crowded station. The smoke stack is a burning effigy too.

Three children force themselves to grow up fast enough that it is only Lucy who needs her mother to hold her as she cries. The three elder Pevensies try to keep it together and pretend with their mother that they are only dressing for any other day out on the London streets. They know they must manage it, and they are forced to grow up enough to be sent away without tears, without breaking down and clinging to their mother, to help Lucy through it. So that Lucy can go away to where she can still be a child a little longer. So that perhaps they can start to remember that they are too when they get there.

Edmund can't do it. He wants his mother to hold him, he wants his father to be there. He says cruel things, because he is hurting and he is a child who can't grow up fast enough. So his mother offers him what she can, an elder brother who is no substitute for his father but all that she can give. "You will listen to your brother, Edmund?" is really a question for Peter, asking him to grow up fast enough to help Edmund survive the end of the world. Ed turns away from his mother's kiss, angry. Then she hugs Peter, hating herself for doing this to him so young, "Promise me you'll look after the others." All he wanted was for his mother to hold him and tell him everything would be all right. You can hear it in his voice, "I will, Mum." He just manages to hold it together. And she cannot meet his eyes as she makes her final plea, "Good man." Because she has no one else to ask.

Susan almost managed it, almost grew up fast enough not to cry. Her mother folds her into her arms, full of relief she cannot indulge. "Oh Susan," glad for only a moment, because she has to ask her, "Be a big girl." Holds her daughter, hating that her little girl has to grow up too fast even for Peter. Because she can give her firstborn no other help. No other partner to protect her family.

Edmund wishes he could get away from his family, so that he could hurt in private. Peter sees a soldier and wishes he could be like his father - a hero far away from the constant failure of keeping his family safe. Able to imagine them happy somewhere while he worked to fix the problem. Susan gives the tickets to the usher, doing what she can as her mother did.

This is only one of a hundred or more tragedies on the platform today. As darling children escape the burning of London. This is the Apocalypse, a hundred tiny hands waving to parents trying to be strong and not cry until the train has pulled away from the station.

Edmund gets his own bag stored, making a point, so they won't pay attention when he buries his face in the window and fights desperately not to cry. Lucy offers him a stuffed dog anyway, and he gives it to a stranger because he saw that it seemed to make Lucy feel better to give it to him.

One station and one series of tragedies at a time, the train empties of broken shards of families hoping for the best in a new place. The Pevensies run for a car, hoping, only to see the world pass them by again. One of the worst things you can do to children is be late to pick them up. Edmund wanders if they have been "incorrectly labeled" which breaks my heart even as it makes me want to laugh. Children who can't be trusted to get off at the right stop expected to run their own family.

An old woman pulls up on a horse and wagon, and Peter says her name like, "Yep, this is how my life has been going recently. You are totally our ride." And she responds, "I'm afraid so." This is what happened after Bonfire Night.

She is surprised by their lack of luggage, forces Peter to say, "No ma'am, it's just us." And now they are afraid it always will be. Because it always will be, even if they get their parents back. That's why their mother almost cried at the station, that's why she asked her elder children to grow up.

Mrs. Macready tells them No Shouting, No Running, No Improper Use of the Dumbwaiter, No Touching, No Disturbing The Professor. As if she doesn't know what kind of day they've had - and because she does. Lucy sees his shadow and runs away. It's Good Cop, Bad Cop, their little routine. It's because he could be a grandfatherly figure to shelter them, but he couldn't take their parents' place.

Peter is listening to the wireless, thinking hard and trying to guess what his father would do. Be his father, listening to the news of the world so he could better protect his family within it. Susan turns it off, like their mother would, because Lucy is already crying. The sheets are scratchy. This new world chafes. But the old world is ashes. Back home, London is burning. Susan tells the lie that her mother would have told, that wars don't last forever, that they don't change things forever. That someday they will go home. Edmund doesn't want to be lied to by an elder brother and sister the way his parents would have. He snots because he wants his mother and his father to be lying to him rather than Susan and Peter.

Peter shouts when Edmund responds to a bedtime reminder from Susan, "Yes mum!" because it's what his father would do. Then he tells Lucy that tomorrow they will play outside, that the new world is green and large and all theirs.

But then the rains came, just to rub it in. They are still trapped in their new, larger, but just as unwelcoming air raid shelter. And now without their mother. Susan tries, but she is too young to know anything but the basics. Educational is better than not, so she tries to get them to play a dictionary game. "Gas-tro-vascular," and Peter tries to play along as his father would or he imagines his father would, asking if it's Latin. Edmund, whose heart is broken, who resents the show his brother and sister are putting on because he does not see how it is breaking their hearts too, snots, "Is it Latin for 'worst game ever invented?'" He does have a point. Peter is still young enough to laugh, although his father would have too.

Lucy suggests hide and seek, and Peter makes her ask please by pretending this isn't exactly the idea he was looking for at this moment. Even the music changes when he starts counting, although Susan and Edmund roll their eyes as they run off.

The children scurry about the new world that survived the burning of London. Susan finds a box that looks like a coffin, Edmund a curtained alcove that looks like a confessional, and Lucy finds a new world that looks like a cupboard, a wardrobe made from the wood of a tree that grew from the first sacred apple in a brand new world, brought to England because of the ability of a young boy to put the needs of strangers in a strange land above his own family's pain. A thing unspeakably ancient and only a few decades old, covered with a cloth that unfurls like the veil between our world and the next, an old connection long forgotten between a bright new sun shining on a brilliant new world and our own, the missing link in the contest between the red sun of Charn and the bright white of Narnia is our own world burning somewhere in between.

By which I mean, Lucy hides in a wardrobe because she hears her brother almost done counting down in a game.

Lucy stumbles backwards, surprised not to hit the wood of the back of the wardrobe, surprised to see a snowy wood when she turns. Surprised that there was not only the darkness of an empty wardrobe. Surprised to see the new world, still there and beautiful, after Bonfire Night.

It is the gift of a kind God, working to protect her in a cruel world. A place where she can still be a child, without her brothers and sister having to work so very hard to give her the chance. She is the gift of a kind God to His children in this cruel world as well. They are both beautiful.

She comes upon a lamppost, burning away in the middle of the wood, the other half of the link created with the wardrobe - a piece of our world that was planted in the new soil of Narnia at the Dawn of Time, when the world was full of Aslan's music. A weapon from our world thrown by Jadis at Aslan as he created a bright, beautiful world around her, transformed into one half of the bridge that will bring a new Londoner to displace her - who will also allow Jadis to finally strike the beast she has been attacking since the Dawn of Time.

Lucy hears footsteps and is afraid. Mr. Tumnus hears a scream from a strange creature and is afraid. They both should be.

_You are Lucy Pevensie, in this moment._

_You are in a strange new world about to meet a creature completely foreign to you. Standing before you in a monstrous shape or a wondrous one. You have the choice to receive it as an evil which must be escaped or eradicated or to accept it as a friend and fellow child of God. All your life you have been taught that all men are created equal, but no one ever said anything about this. You can choose to see it as devil or as angel, as enemy or as friend. _

_Or you can transcend the dichotomy and accept it on its own terms. See not a monster or a fairy tale but merely an unfamiliar shape. You can reject the black and white nature of the universe and treat the strange Other as a fellow sentient creature with flaws and good qualities, as something beyond the petty distinction between the absolutes of thing-I-must-kill-or-be-killed-by and person-I-could-have-tea-with-if-I-taught-it-about-tea._

_Lucy chooses to smile at him, a wonder and a gift from a kind God in a cruel world._

Lucy steps away from the lamppost, the remnant of her own world. Mr. Tumnus takes his package from her. Two worlds have collided. He is the one more scared. She does not understand why. Here, she is something far more fearful than him.

He lies and she laughs. She politely asks what he is, and he responds a little less politely but only because he is afraid of her answer. He feeds her a lie, "You must be some kind of beardless dwarf?" to give himself plausible deniability. She laughs, not catching the look in his eyes, "I'm not a dwarf! I'm a girl!" Delighted by this gift of her kind God, a gift in a cruel world, more wondrous every moment. "And actually I'm tallest in my class!" as if she had a class anymore.

Mr. Tumnus looks at her, the great test he never really thought he would have to face in this world that has been cruel and cold too long, not knowing that she is his gift from a kind God as well. "You mean to say that you're a daughter of Eve?" wandering if such a fearful and hopeful thing is really standing in front of him, putting him to the test he bet his soul he would never have to face.

She tells him her mother's name, as if she still had a mother named Helen (the same name as the first Queen of Narnia, from the Dawn of Time). He corrects her that he's asking if she's human. She tells him yes, and he barely contains his panic. "What are you doing here?" How steady would your voice be when you met the Bringer of the Apocalypse? If you met Guy Fawkes, standing below Parliament with a powder keg? Even if he were polite and charming. This is the first Bonfire Night, in Narnia, as his work is being completed in London by a force greater than a not-so-petty terrorist. Would you believe him, if he said he didn't know where he was or what was in the kegs or why he would have a match in his pocket, as Lucy explains that she doesn't know about Narnia?

He tells her about Narnia, and she wonders at the width and breadth of the wardrobe that contains her wondrous gift from a kind God protecting his childhood from a cruel world. He shivers in her presence, the Test he bet his soul, to keep his life and his house, that he would never have to face. He shakes her hand, literally vibrating it as she insists then shows him how it's done. And he begins to charm her, to do the job he bet his soul he would never have to do. Because he knew that it never really mattered if his bluff was called.

He says the magic words without realizing it, because the one thing that Lucy Pevensie lost completely to the burning of London was the chance to "make a new friend." And he smiles, liking her and knowing that will make it harder. He locks the door in the midst of her wonder. Lucy tries to get him to look at the last thing he wants to see right now, his father's face. His father who never would have taken this bargain, who would not have had to fear and betray the Bringer of the Apocalypse, to reject the gift of a kind God in a cruel world.

Lucy goes again to his father's things, the war hero like her father. The elder Mr. Tumnus's collection of books on the prophecy of man, of the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve who would set Narnia free. Mr. Tumnus stares at the fire and tea, unable to look at Lucy or the remnants of his father that were a comfort before now.

He tells her there hasn't been a Christmas for one hundred years. Bonfire Night means that Christmas is coming soon - but Mr. Tumnus would not know that, because this is the first Bonfire Night in Narnia. Where it is always winter and never Christmas. Mr. Tumnus talks about the dancing of the Summers of Narnia, memories he barely has, memories passed down from war hero father to compromising son.

I did not understand, until I moved farther north, what a hundred years of winter means. I could think that yes, objectively, always winter would suck in the same way that, objectively, summer would start to pale if it went on forever. But now I know, how the cold bites you and makes you shrink back in, retreat to your home base. Stay in even when you want to go out, keep yourself wrapped in tight even in your own home. You can't breathe free air, you are restricted. If that goes on too long, you begin to let your light flicker and die out. How you long to throw your arms back and dance, unrestricted by your light, breezy clothes, in the summer wind and feel the warmth of the sun fall all over you. Just to be away from the ever-weakening crackle of the fire for a little while. How you long for Spring, when the breeze no longer hurts, when it is soft and gentle and warm, and you can throw your head back to embrace it rather than huddle against it. To stop fighting and hiding and rest.

Mr. Tumnus remembers the music, but it has been winter too long. Even the music has twisted into a tool for the White Witch in his hands. A beautiful reedy instrument makes the flames dance - the charm of comfort, the warm and bright gift of a kind God in the darkest and longest of winters, the fauns dancing again. But the greatest gift in the fire is the kind God's warning roar, warning Mr. Tumnus to remember his father and his own heart, to break the bargain he made when he bet his soul this Test would never come. And as it grows dark, as Lucy's slumber makes the last light of hope go out, Mr. Tumnus realizes what he has done.

He still does not know that Lucy is his gift, the first presents exchanged in a hundred years of winter. So he sobs in the dark until she wakes up and gives him the chance to repent, to realize that they are each other's gift from a kind God. He tells her eventually, trying to make her see beforehand that his kind were once proud and beautiful and that he is nothing to his race but a "poor sampling." Nothing to his war hero father.

"I'm kidnapping you - for the White Witch." He was going to bring the Bringer of the Apocalypse to the Queen of this world. Even though he knew that Lucy was good and that the Witch was evil. Even though he knew that she was his chance for spring. "I thought you were my friend." In her eyes, he can still be a good faun. It is enough, somehow. Because if Guy Fawkes were this beautiful, and this innocent, and this forgiving, then wouldn't you let him strike the match and burn a world as frozen and terrible and frightening as Narnia? If you couldn't imagine him putting a worse world in the place of the one he was prophesied to destroy?

Mr. Tumnus runs with her, telling her it may be too late. The Witch's spies, even some of the trees, report to her, may have already told the queen she was here. Lucy asks if he will be all right, and he cries. He tells her it is only because he is ashamed, but that is a kind lie. The hard truth he says after she leaves him her handkerchief, "Whatever happens, Lucy Pevensie, I am glad to have met you." Glad, after all, that the Test came. Joyous and full of wonder that he passed after all, terrified of what the revenge of the Witch will be for having remained true to the Lion for which his father fought. "I've felt warmer than I've felt in a hundred years."

If it were Lucy Pevensie, below the House of Parliament, ready to set the fire that would melt winter into spring at last, wouldn't you offer to strike the match yourself?

She runs, and he is frightened and careful again. And deep in his heart, he hopes that he is right, that he didn't just let something as fearful as the Bringer of the Apocalypse get away in order to burn Narnia into ashes. Narnia's Bonfire Night is kinder, because its winter is crueler.

In England, we celebrate the burning that did not happen. In Narnia, they will celebrate the blaze that did.

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><p><strong>AN:** See you on Groundhog Day.


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